Next on the runway: Recline rage

With seats shrinking and air travel becoming ever more annoying, is growing anger over legroom the new air rage?

Sunday’s diversion of a United Airlines because of a fight over a seat-immobilizing “KneeDefender” is the talk of the nation’s put-upon air passengers this week, but it’s far from the first airborne fracas to break out over one traveler’s desire to lean back into someone else’s leg room.

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Disputes such as these, borne of frustration about the flying experience, are “probably the biggest challenge of our work every single day because our flights are fuller than ever,” said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Such disputes were one of the main reasons flight attendants opposed allowing small knives back in the cabin, she said.

“Any time you pack a group of people into a smaller space, there’s opportunity for conflict,” Nelson said.

In Sunday’s incident, a flight from Newark, N.J., to Denver had to land in Chicago after a passenger used a U-shaped “Knee Defender” to immobilize the seat in front of him, preventing the woman sitting there from reclining. A flight attendant asked the man to remove the gadget, which most U.S. airlines have banned, but he refused, The Associated Press reported. The female passenger then threw water in his face.

A database of airborne incidents dating back to 1988 doesn’t appear to contain other references to the “Knee Defender,” but it shows several altercations over the years involving passengers warring over a few extra inches of leg space. None led to a flight being diverted — but one almost did.

In 1998, one passenger would not let the person in front of her recline because she had a child in her lap and got into a loud argument with the flight attendants when they intervened. “I told her the captain would land the aircraft in Boston and put her off if the behavior continued,” the report read. The passenger relented.

Another report recounts a German passenger who was “shoving the seat in front forward each time the female passenger in the seat would recline,” escalating his behavior to “pounding on the seat in front, verbal abuse, and threatening.”

In 2000, a passenger on a plane from New York to Los Angeles — who had already cursed workers over having to check her carry-on bag because the overhead bins were full — refused to let the person in front recline because the seat was interfering with her laptop.

“She then told me that she wouldn’t speak to me again, because I had made a ‘hostile environment’ for her,” the flight attendant wrote. The captain was called in to mediate.

Other incidents have bordered on the bizarre. In 2000, a passenger assigned to an exit row seat — which don’t recline to ensure the maximum room in an emergency — became so exercised when she realized that she couldn’t push the seat back that she refused to sit in the seat at all.

“She looked for another seat after I told her we were full. Then she got a blanket and laid on the floor … people had to step over her to use the other lavatory,” the report read. The captain eventually persuaded her to return to her seat — where, according to the obviously piqued flight attendant who wrote the report, she promptly fell asleep.

Also in 2000 — apparently a banner year for seat-reclining confrontations — a man again refused to take a seat in an exit row because it wouldn’t recline, and since the flight was full, no other seat was available. The passenger “became very aggressive” and charged the flight attendant, then was kicked off the plane before it took off.

Nelson said flight attendants’ job when those troubles break out is “de-escalating tempers.”

“We try everything we can to keep conflict out of the cabin,” Nelson said. She added, “Once you get up into the air, there’s nowhere to go but down to deal with the problem.”